You could tell by its mixed reviews that many critics didn’t know they just took a class in cartoon physics after watching director Genndy Tartakovsky’s debut feature Hotel Transylvania. But the viewing public caught on right away — audiences were so captivated by its gut-busting gags and anti-realism animation that they helped it become the highest-grossing September opening in film history.

Those happy families didn’t seem to care that the film — in which a frazzled Dracula hosts a mad monster party for his daughter Mavis, who’s itching to leave the coffin — didn’t seem to actually care that Hotel Transylvania was acting like a cartoon. Tartakovsky’s debut feature doesn’t delimit itself with unnecessary pretense to reality: It’s strictly about pure characters unleashing rapid-fire jokes, with some metafictional bows to animation envelope-pushers from back in the day like Tex Avery and Bob Clampett. Which is to say, it’s not like anything in the feature animation marketplace today.

“We started out by thinking that animation can do anything — singing flowers, walking chairs, all that stuff,” Tartakovsky told Wired by phone, breathing sighs of relief that Hotel Transylvania’s box-office performance might widen his feature film horizons. “But then we moved to completely copying realism. Maybe this is a good time to start going back to the old ways, where anything can happen.”

The budding success of Hotel Transylvania should help with that, especially since the film spent years in development hell before Tartakovsky arrived following five other directors to save the day. The Dexter’s Laboratory creator’s next animated film, a 21st-century reboot of Fleischer Studios’ salty but surreal Popeye the Sailor, could help a resurgence of the old-school as well.

Not only that, but the director promises that what he has planned for E.C. Segar’s maritime savant could make Hotel Transylvania‘s cartoon physics tutorial look like homeroom.

“When it was first presented to me, it felt like the cheap exploitation of a known property,” Tartakovsky said. “But as I started to think about it, it felt more like a great opportunity to do physical animated humor, to take what we did in Hotel Transylvania, multiply it by 10, and design really physical sequences that aren’t reliant on dialog. Then I got excited.”

Wired spoke with Tartakovsky about Hotel Transylvania’s middle-finger to animated realism, how to bring the surreal Popeye and cerebral Samurai Jack to the multiplexes, and whatever happened to his mecha lovechild Sym-Bionic Titan.

The Hotel Transylvania Challenge

Wired: So it seems like you had a good weekend.

Tartakovsky: [Laughs] We did! We had a very good weekend. I went to see [Hotel Transylvania] Friday with a normal audience and I noticed that most of the kids sat in their seats and watched it. [Laughs] And I credit that to the visuals. They’re stimulating and fun, and captured the audience like a good cartoon should.

Wired: It set a September record, which seemed to push back against some of what seemed to be unnecessarily lame reviews.

Tartakovsky: Not that we made a perfect film, but the way I look at it is that some of the reviews were definitely harsher than they could have been. I think that it’s perception. The problem with animated films is that there’s only one kind that you are allowed to make: the Pixar-Disney type, which we don’t have. So during all this press, I’ve been trying to change that perception. This is a different film: It’s broad comedy, it’s silly and fun. It’s not trying to be a drama with comedy, it’s trying to be a comedy with comedy! [Laughs] And that’s a big difference. You know, I loved Toy Story. It’s a great movie, but it has some pretty serious drama.

Wired: It seems like Toy Story has actually made things worse, because it’s enabled animated films to think and act like regular films rather than push the limits of cartoon physics on the big screen.

Tartakovsky: I think it’s partially because of CG, although it was happening before that. Even before CG came along, we were heading toward realism. If you look back at Disney’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame or Pocahontas, animated films were trying to get more and more real before CG really arrived. And that’s a shame, because I feel like it’s fun to watch animated films that are completely different from realism, with completely different worlds that you can embrace. And that’s where I was really trying to push Hotel Transylvania, into a crazy, silly world that still has some rules, but whose animation pushes it further over the top.

Wired: Plus, these are supernatural characters. Pursuing realism doesn’t make any sense, not that it hasn’t stopped other animators.

‘I didn’t want Hotel Transylvania to be the nail in the coffin for cartoony animation.’

— Genndy Tartakovsky

Tartakovsky: Yeah, it was one of the big things I was worried about. I didn’t want Hotel Transylvania to be the nail in the coffin for cartoony animation. Because if the movie failed, I could see people blaming that aspect of it. I was really nervous about that. And once it started performing well….

Wired: Cartoon redemption!

Tartakovsky: Watching it with an audience, you can tell it works. It gets a lot of laughs. And I’ve sat through a bunch of children’s films and heard nothing, from kids or adults. But we’ve had steady laughter throughout our screenings of the film. Number one, I think its animation takes people by surprise, and that allows both adults and children to almost bond at the same level.

Wired: Yeah, I think a lot of critics viewed it through the realism prism, but they should know better that it fits right in with the animation traditions of others who have pushed the envelope.

Tartakovsky: It’s hard, because I don’t think we did anything really new, just newer for feature animation. Like the first big sequence at the hotel where all the different monsters and characters arrive? We got so many dual reactions to that sequence. Critics saying that it was too hectic and they couldn’t stand watching it, or that they had so much fun watching it that they wanted to watch it again.

Wired: Well, if it makes you feel better, I wasn’t worried about the film performing well. Knowing what you’ve been able to do in animation before, I had a feeling you’d give something cool to the viewers that’s currently missing.

Tartakovsky: You should’ve called me Thursday night. [Laughs]

Wired: Were you freaking out?

Tartakovsky: It’s funny, because sometimes your career is on a pattern. For my first 15 years, I had a great one: Come up with a show, make it, it’s successful. But then I left and started my own studio Orphanage, and we couldn’t sell a movie. And then we finally got Sym-Bionic Titan off the ground, a show that I had to really work hard on, and fight so much for. Then Cartoon Network canceled it. So there I was, in another situation where I had to work and fight just as hard, and, oh look, here comes opening weekend! Oh no, what if the pattern continues? What if it bombs? Because I believe in patterns. Things go your way, and then they don’t, and you have to fight through it until they go your way again. I was worried that I was still stuck in my negative pattern.

The Rise and Fall (and Rise?) of Sym-Bionic Titan

Wired: It’s safe to say you’re out of it now. But let’s go back to the massively underrated Titan. What the hell happened?

Tartakovsky: Cartoon Network bought into the show for one reason, and when they got it, their mind changed on what they wanted the show to be. I sold it as an action show combined with a John Hughes comedy. Teenage issues and characters with amazing action, and that’s what they bought. But as we started making it, they were making Ben 10 and Generator Rex, and they wanted it to be that. And there was no way I was going to make that type of show. So they didn’t really push or support the show, we didn’t get a toy license, and that was it. It didn’t get numbers because they didn’t promote it the right way, and we didn’t get the audience that we really needed.

Wired: Too bad. I carried the torch hard for that deserving show, and Cartoon Network called me when it was canceled and basically kept telling me how much they loved you. And all I could say is, “If you love him, then support him.” I didn’t know what to tell them.

‘The one positive thing that I just heard is that they’re going to start showing Sym-Bionic Titan on Adult Swim.’

— Genndy Tartakovsky

Tartakovsky: Shows are a dime a dozen. I mean, all shows are good at the outset, but it’s really about who makes them and how they’re made. The old guard at Cartoon Network used to understand that, but the new guard didn’t. But the one positive thing that I just heard is that they’re going to start showing Sym-Bionic Titan on Adult Swim.

Wired: Like most of your work, Sym-Bionic Titan is unclassifiable, which probably makes marketing departments mad.

Tartakovsky: No, it’s true. It’s not the norm. You can’t just put it in a box. You have to treat it special, and it should be like that for everything.

Wired: You said at the Hotel Transylvania premiere that you were thinking about picking it up again.

Tartakovsky: Well, we’ve got 10 more scripts that we wrote for it, which are amazing. When the series was canceled, we were just getting to the meat of the story. The reveal of Lance’s father, and other incredible stuff. Alanna falling in love in a ’70s musical episode. Way more action. We were excited, so I would love to do it again. If it does well on Adult Swim, maybe there will be an opportunity to bring it back. I don’t know how in the hell I can execute it if I’m doing work at Sony, but it really would be a good problem to have. I’ll definitely find a way.

Bringing Back Popeye for Post-Millennials

Wired: I’m not privy to your contractual details, so….

Tartakovsky: We agreed to develop two more films. So we’re going to see how that goes.

Wired: And it sounds like a Popeye reboot is one of them.

Tartakovsky: Right.

‘When Popeye was first presented to me, it felt like the cheap exploitation of a known property. But as I started to think about it, it felt more like a great opportunity to do physical animated humor.’

— Genndy Tartakovsky

Wired: Radical. And ironic: The last time we saw Popeye in theaters, it was a situation similar to Hotel Transylvania, except that Robert Altman made not a cartoon but a bewildering live-action film that acted like a cartoon, to mixed critical reaction.

Tartakovsky: I liked it. I was younger when I saw it, but it totally resonated with me, especially since I was a big fan of Robin Williams. It was just this weird live-action version that was super artistic. That’s what was really cool about it. It was a live-action cartoon. It was definitely weird, but I enjoyed that.

Tartakovsky: That’s basically the whole reason for me doing it. When it was first presented to me, it felt like the cheap exploitation of a known property. But as I started to think about it, it felt more like a great opportunity to do physical animated humor. To take what we did in Hotel Transylvania and multiply it by 10, and really push it and design very physical sequences that aren’t reliant on dialog. Then I got excited and pitched that to Sony, and they were excited about it. They sensed the fun of the film that we just made, and they could sense it in Popeye, whose material lends itself even more to it.

Wired: Every time Popeye eats spinach, he can turn into a rocket fist flying through the air or something.

Tartakovsky: Yeah, but even something as simple as the way a character can walk. Olive Oyl is one of my top three favorite animated characters, so I can imagine transporting her into CGI’s three-dimensional space. She’d still move in that same rubbery way, but with real clothes on. Visuals like that can become the Popeye film’s signature, and make it super fun to look at.

The same old supernatural (and Saturday Night Live) gang gets a much-needed dose of new blood, thanks to Tartakovsky’s flick, which features the voices of Adam Sandler, Molly Shannon, Jon Lovitz, and David Spade. Image courtesy Sony Pictures Animation

Meet the New School, Needs More Old School

Wired: It’s important for fans, and animators working today, to know that everything came imaginatively alive in toons from that early period. Trees, houses, everything.

Tartakovsky: That’s exactly true. We started out thinking that animation can do anything — singing flowers, walking chairs, all that stuff — but moved to completely copying realism. Maybe this is a good time to start going back to the old ways, where anything can happen.

It’s funny, I worked with a lot of feature animators on Hotel Transylvania who were used to doing visual effects for films like Men In Black and Spider-Man, who I had to tell, “No, make it crazier and more cartoony, forget about the physics.” It took a while for some of the animators to adjust to that. My favorite story is the one about the simple shot of Hotel Transylvania where Jonathan walks into the pool with a creature on his back for a chicken fight. The first pass of that was so realistic. I mean, it was good and well-animated. But there was no energy and nothing funny about it. It was just a guy, any guy, walking down stairs. So I pitched out a different walk that’s more cartoony, although it’s just up and down, and the animator just couldn’t get it. So finally I broke it down and animated it, and when we all watched it, everybody laughed. Because now it has a little energy, not enough for a guffaw, but enough for a chuckle and smile, and that’s what the movie has a lot of.

‘Dracula is the main reason I took the movie. Stories are important, but I’m really into characters, and if you can give birth to a good one, that’s true success.’

— Genndy Tartakovsky

Wired: But add all of those laughs up, and you’ve got cartoon comedy. The velocity of Adam Sandler’s Dracula increases the more he loses his mind.

Tartakovsky: Dracula is the main reason I took the movie. Stories are important, but I’m really into characters, and if you can give birth to a good one, that’s true success. I was like, “Here’s my Bugs Bunny, or Daffy Duck. What if I can make him a manic star of a Bugs Bunny movie, starring Dracula?” I figured it would be really fun if I could pull that off. He can be a character who’s barely holding on as everything goes wrong, while he’s trying to do the right thing and protect his daughter. That was really exciting to me, because it’s pure character. [Laughs] And I know some of the reviews said that the story was too thin, but it is thin: If we were doing plot points, we’d have half the gags.

Wired: And half the laughs, and probably half the box-office too. You gave Dracula impressive range, which gave Sandler much to do. I’ve also read some reviews that said you rehabilitated his sagging brand, which is Hollywood-speak but still carries some truth considering how bad his recent films have been. Has he called to thank you yet?

Tartakovsky: I mean, Adam’s actually very happy with how it’s played, but that’s the extent of it. But you know I don’t really think about that. That’s not my job. We tried to make the best movie we could make, and I’m happy with the way Adam performed. He’s a really funny person; it’s not like I actually had to push him. He did what he did, but I think the animation elevated it. I like to think we enhanced his performance to a more manic level. Because that’s the thing, this movie could’ve have been made where the animation didn’t push him, and it could’ve worked. The reviews that killed me are the ones complaining about cameras going all over the place.

Wired: It’s a cartoon. They do that.

Tartakovsky: But I’ll guarantee you that we have half the camera moves of any other animated movie. It’s so controlled; half the time, the characters are just standing and talking. We’re not even doing the shaky live cam; it’s locked off. Again, it’s just perception. Critics maybe watch the opening sequence in the lobby and the table chase sequence, and that’s enough to make them feel that it’s manic. [Laughs]

Wired: Speaking of manic, let’s talk about what happens next besides Popeye. Are toon geeks’ dreams of a Samurai Jack animated film coming true?

Tartakovsky: Well, I’m developing Popeye and an original animated family film of mine, which is about all I can say right now. But we have been having lots of discussions about Samurai Jack, and they’re all about its market. Is it just the fans who will see it? How can we get more of a general audience to see it? It is cult? Can it break out of the cult so that more people see it?

Wired: Is the concern that it’s too quiet or cerebral? Are you willing to compromise the series?

Tartakovsky: No, if I’m going to do it, we’re going to do it like the show. Just on a feature level, where everything can be tighter and more nuanced. Plus, I’m a better storyteller now, I’ve learned more. You know, I’ve seen Samurai Jack on the big screen at my work, and seeing even a television episode on the big screen is a totally different experience. Everything resonates so much more; you can feel it so much more. It would be amazing as a film. I feel that Samurai Jack was pretty bold and cinematic, so you can imagine how it would look blown up three stories high.